Kollaborate
Pro Maintenance Tools
Pro Media Tools
CinePlay
Post Haste
Preference Manager
FCS Remover|
Maintain, optimize and troubleshoot your NLE
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Professional cloud workflow platform
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Simplified media management
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Last week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.23, a minor update to our flagship suite of maintenance and optimization tools for your NLE.
This version adds support for the new changes in Adobe Creative Cloud 2014 and FCPX 10.1.2.
Autosave Manager now allows you to view, manage and restore the automatic project backups FCPX creates.
Please note that for technical reasons the "Send to Application" button works differently in FCPX as it backs up the old project and restores the backup, as opposed to other applications where the backup can be viewed without restoring it.
Pro Maintenance Tools includes Preference Manager 4.2, with new features including Adobe CC 2014 and Lightworks support.
System Toolkit can now automatically trash the ColorSync cache which is known to fix certain display issues in FCPX and Adobe Premiere.
This is a subset of the changes in this version and the full list of changes can be viewed here.
Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for media professionals that is used by freelancers and major studios alike. To find out more, view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
We earlier released Preference Manager 4.2, a major update to our free NLE preference management tool.
In this version we've added support for the new Adobe Creative Cloud 2014 update and also tentative support for the Lightworks beta for Mac.
We've also made several other changes and bug fixes, the full list of which is available here.
Preference Manager is an essential free tool for video professionals. To find out more read the user manual, watch the overview video or download it free.
Last week we released Kollaborate Server 1.1.1 which brings all of the changes in Kollaborate 1.1.1 plus many other server-specific changes.
Shared links can now be set to automatically expire after a certain time period, allowing you to limit access to a file to prevent abuse. This feature is optional and you can still create permanent links as before if you wish.
Site navigation has been streamlined and the Dashboard page is gone. In its place we are now showing alerts on a per-page basis. In the Files section we also provide a list of which files are new or have changes, making it much more intuitive to get up to speed on what's new within a project.
Kollaborate Server is a version of the Kollaborate cloud workflow platform that you can run in-house on your own servers and storage, with improved customization. To find out more about Kollaborate, view the feature list, read the Kollaborate Server documentation or sign up for the free 15-day cloud trial.
Today we launched Kollaborate 1.1.1 onto the cloud, featuring many tweaks and improvements to the site.
Shared links can now be set to automatically expire after a certain time period, allowing you to limit access to a file to prevent abuse. This feature is optional and you can still create permanent links as before if you wish.
Site navigation has been streamlined and the Dashboard page is gone. In its place we are now showing alerts on a per-page basis. In the Files section we also provide a list of which files are new or have changes, making it much more intuitive to get up to speed on what's new within a project.
Additionally, we have added unsubscription links to the automatic emails sent out by the site, making it easy for less technical users to limit the notifications they receive without needing to login to their profile.
We've made many small changes to the Projects section of the site. Projects are now either Active or Archived and a project that is completed can still be listed as active if you wish.
Managing lots of projects is simpler because the last time you accessed the project is now logged, pushing the most recent projects to the top of the list by default to make them easier to find.
Additionally, it is now possible for a user invited by someone else to a project to leave that project.
We're working to make our helper tools more consistent with the features of the web interface and apps like CinePlay now contribute to view counts and trigger viewing receipts.
We also launched Kollaborate Transfer 1.1, a major new update to our free encoding and uploading tool. This features significantly faster encoding speeds for H.264 and ProRes source media, along with the option to embed a watermark image in the file.
Kollaborate is a cloud workflow platform that brings Digital Rebellion apps together to help you work better with your team. To find out more read the feature list or sign up for the free 15-day trial (no credit card needed).
We're pleased to launch Marker Import for Windows, a free application for importing your Cut Notes and Kollaborate notes into Adobe Premiere Pro for PC.
Much like the current Mac version, it can remove existing markers from the sequence and even offset markers if the timecode is incorrect.
Both the Mac and PC versions of Marker Import are free downloads from the sidebar on the Cut Notes site or Kollaborate Resources page. A user manual with a usage tutorial is available here.
WWDC is tomorrow, where Apple is likely to announce a new version of OS X. Here's what we'd like to see.
There are so many improvements needed for AV Foundation that it merits an article of its own, but a few would be expanded codec support, easier extensibility, LOTS of bug fixes and the ability to stream Airplay video without ugly hacks.
Apple should allow app developers to request exemptions from sandboxing rules. We feel that the strict rules hurt the user experience and even removed one of our apps as a result of this.
Other areas for improvement would be the ability to hide third-party updates and not requiring a password for free updates (this can get tedious if you have multiple accounts).
OS X frequently marks files in use when they aren't, which can cause issues copying or deleting files and also when emptying the Trash.
I have a theory that this may be caused by QuickLook trying to generate icon previews for these files but it's difficult to pinpoint.
This bug is especially frustrating when using network drives as OS X frequently creates temp files that can only be deleted after unmounting and remounting the drive.
Full screen functionality was improved significantly in Mavericks with the "Displays have separate Spaces" option in the Mission Control section of System Preferences, but many people had to switch it off and revert to the old system due to compatibility issues (mine were with FCP 7).
When switching back to the old way of doing things on a shared Space, OS X blanks out all monitors even if there is nothing displaying on them.
I think the solution to this problem is a blacklist where users can specify apps that should only use the current Space on another monitor without disabling it for compatible apps.
It is clear that Apple is assuming most users are saving files to HFS+ formatted SSDs. This is apparent when mounting a drive over a VPN connection because Finder and many other Apple apps experience very poor performance.
In fact, I completely eschew Apple apps over a VPN and use Path Finder as a Finder replacement and AppCode as an Xcode substitute because those apps do not read or write to disk unnecessarily and handle these issues much better.
Apple is announcing a new OS when arguably Mavericks still needs a lot of bug fixes. Some of the issues I am still experiencing in 10.9.3 are:
With these issues in mind, I would be very happy if Apple institutes a Snow Leopard-style overhaul. Snow Leopard was so stable it took me a long time to upgrade and many of our customers are still using it.
I'm also hoping that Apple recently opening up the beta program to non-developers helps to address this, but if it doesn't I feel that Apple should not commit to a yearly upgrade schedule if they cannot guarantee quality.
With WWDC and iOS 8 around the corner, we thought we'd offer up our wish list for future iOS features and bug fixes.
The biggest problem with iOS is the limited file system, which can make working on files in different apps difficult.
Currently you can store movies and photos in a central place that is accessible by all apps with permission to access it. While this implementation has its flaws (e.g. apps can't delete files they've created), creating a similar storage area for documents would go some way toward improving the limitations when sharing files.
Much like Photos and Videos, these documents could be accessed and managed in a Documents (or Files) app.
Another problem with iOS is that it can be difficult to know what to do when someone emails you an unusual file format.
For example, customers often email me .log files when I'm on the move. These are exactly the same as text files, however iOS refuses to open them because they do not have a .txt extension.
Unlike OS X, you cannot force a file to open in another app, nor can you rename files, so I was stuck scouring the App Store for an app that would open them. The only app I found that would open them was a hex editor app but this was not a perfect solution because it was not designed for formatting and displaying large portions of text.
OS X has a lot of utility apps like TextEdit, Preview, Font Book, etc, but Apple seems to have delegated Mail as the only (limited) general-purpose file viewer. If Apple hopes to one day replace OS X with iOS they will need to address issues like this.
I have a lot of difficulty with copying and pasting. The primary issue I experience is that iOS tries to second-guess what I'm doing and it always gets it wrong.
For example, after you have selected a certain amount of text iOS assumes you want to select the entire paragraph, which may not be exactly what you want, but there's no way to select less.
So I find it easier to select more text than I need, paste it and then delete the parts I don't want.
While switching between apps is simple, the apps don't always retain their status when you switch back to them.
For example, an app that requires a network connection may have disconnected or you may have to wait for a web browser to reload the page again.
This doesn't happen every time but it occurs when iOS comes under pressure to free up memory. Now that iDevice CPUs are pretty fast I hope Apple can implement an OS X-style memory compression system to reduce occurrences.
I also hope the rumors of split-screen multitasking are true because it will help significantly with this issue.
I use the stock Mail app with Gmail because I have not found a third-party mail app that I like (suggestions are appreciated).
However, the Mail app seems to be frequently confused by conversations, with some messages correctly joined together and others shown as distinct messages. This can be annoying if I've deleted a conversation, only for all the deleted messages to reappear in my inbox when someone else replies. In some cases this requires me to re-delete 15 or so messages.
Another issue is that it seems to be impossible to actually delete messages. Deleted messages are archived with a special tag rather than actually being deleted. Additionally, sent messages don't show up in other apps or the Gmail web interface.
It's for reasons like the five listed above that I prefer to delegate particular tasks until I get back to a desktop computer. If the rumors are correct and Apple is creating an iPad Pro, simply adding a bigger screen won't be enough. In my opinion the changes most likely to endear it to professional usage would come from iOS itself.
Earlier this week we released Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.22, a minor update to our suite of troubleshooting and repair tools for your NLE.
Compressor Repair can now fix instances of the common "Unable to submit to queue" error in Compressor 4.1. This is a better solution than Apple's official advice because you do not lose custom settings and destinations.
Housekeeper can fix an issue occurring for some users who upgraded from OS X 10.6 to a later version of OS X and can no longer use the playback controls in QuickTime Player X.
We've also simplified the Media Salvage user interface. The Output Format dropdown now only shows codecs and frame size and frame rate settings are now set in the columns to the right.
The full list of changes in Pro Maintenance Tools 2.0.22 is here.
Pro Maintenance Tools is an essential toolkit for maintaining, optimizing and troubleshooting your editing system. To find out more see the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
When copying certain files to a network volume on OS X 10.9, Finder (or indeed Path Finder) will copy the first 12 KB and then beachball for minutes before eventually completing the transfer.
Our testing has indicated that this seems to occur when overwriting files from a local disk to the network volume and seems to only occur with .app application bundles. We believe this may be something to do with resource forks because it is rare for files other than applications to have them and network volumes do not support them. It does not occur on file transfers between the same network drive or from one network drive to another.
It's a nasty bug because it not only causes Finder to hang for minutes but can also affect all other applications using files on that volume. It has even a couple of times completely prevented any network or internet access at all for the duration of the file transfer.
We've reported this to Apple and are waiting on a fix. In the meantime, the easiest way is to either delete the destination file and then copy it or compress the .app bundle, copy it and then decompress.
Yesterday we released Pro Media Tools 1.2.1, a minor update to our suite of media management tools.
We've overhauled flash frame detection in Video Check, which not only offers more reliable detection but also allows you to manually specify the maximum length of a flash frame to search for. Also, when showing a flash frame in the results view, the length of the flash is now specified.
QT Edit can now import timecode from a range of files in a batch. Go to File > New Batch and import a range of files that you want to apply timecode to. Then select the "Create timecode track from QuickTime movie" Quick Task and browse for a folder containing movie files with identical filenames to those in the batch.
This functionality is very useful for situations where you've processed dailies with another application that has stripped the timecode out of the files and need to restore the timecode back again.
There were a few other minor changes in this version which you can read about here.
Pro Media Tools is an invaluable toolkit to help editors and post production professionals enhance their media management workflows. To find out more view the feature list, read the user manual, watch the overview video or download the free 15-day trial.
Cut Notes
CinePlay
Aspect Ratio Matte Generator
Video Space Calculator